Kelley O'Donnell, MD

At an early age, I was drawn to multidisciplinary approaches to knowledge. That interest was never exclusively academic: with a strong family history of mental illness, I had a strong urge to harness my academic interests in the service of others. As such, I earned my BA in the Great Books program at St. John’s College in Annapolis, MD, where I studied Western Classics, earning a liberal arts degree that included majors in Philosophy and the History of Math and Science, and minors in Classics and Comparative Literature.

Deeply curious about the interface of mental health and neuroscience, I continued my education in the Medical Scientist Training Program at UCLA, where I earned my MD degree (2015) and a PhD in Neuroscience (2013). I then pursued psychiatry training on the research track of the residency program at NYU, which at the time was one of a small number of institutions with an active program of psychedelic research. 

Having benefited from the support and leadership of NYU in psychedelic clinical research, I am currently a board-certified psychiatrist and a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, where I am also the Director of Clinical Training at the NYU Langone Center for Psychedelic Medicine. I have been directly involved in psychedelic research since 2015, and now have advanced training and extensive experience working with psilocybin and MDMA in the clinical research context, and ketamine in the clinical context. In addition to my work as a psychedelic therapist, clinical supervisor, and co-investigator on a number of clinical trials, I am also involved in psychedelic curriculum development initiatives, and teach extensively on topics related to psychedelic medicine and integrative psychotherapy.